How possible is this, really?
To push back into the corners the rose-colored blush of feeling,
The heat and the quickened pulse –
Is it possible to cram it back?
Pack it in
Like soft silver into a hole hollowed out by a dentist and his drill
Layer after layer
Pressed into the sides
And leveled off at the bottom?
Put something on top of desire, fold winter coats and woolen blankets over it,
Weigh it down with old photo albums and out of date encyclopedias and it will
still find its way out
Or else it will eat through what contains it
Like moths, or mold or decay
Clawing its way free.

I see Laertes like a preacher in the pulpit here –
Suggesting the congregation start to tremble at the suggestion of hell.
Somehow someone suggesting one should be afraid
Always has a shading of religiosity
Because fear doesn’t usually need to be prompted.
Fear comes unbidden
Unconsidered, illogical.The way the screams just fell out of me
Everytime the mouse ran out from under my couch
No matter how many times I told myself I wouldn’t.
It’s only the unseen, intangible we need to be taught
To be afraid of –
And this rhythm, this cadence
Has the rhythm
Of those teachings.
It’s no wonder Ophelia
Compares him to a pastor
In the subsequent lines.

Many a song has won my credent ear.
I read today that men fall in love through their eyes, women through their ears
And certainly I have fallen victim
To pretty words or pretty tunes
Or the slow ascendance of a bass guitar
Or the steady rhythm of a drum.
It’s harder to think of a man I’ve been with who wasn’t a musician
Than to remember those that were. But I love my credent ear
For listening, listing all those songs.

Is Laertes saying that Hamlet is the main voice of Denmark?
Given his situation, it would seem to be giving him a lot of weight –
A lot of weight he seems to have lost with the succession of his uncle.
Or is it Claudius who is the main voice of Denmark
Who would have to give his approval
Or is the general public the main voice?
Do they have to vote on the spouse of a prince?
But once again, I can’t help but notice
The family tendency to talk around a thing
Instead of right into it.

The body, yielding,
Bending
Softening
To allow for passage for response or touch.
The body here is the public, I expect
But the image is so corporeal,
So like a pliant moving living person
Moving with the will of its head.
This is, of course, what Laertes is worried his sister’s body is doing –
Yielding to the willful head of state,
Doing everything he asks
Bending toward his desire.

Laertes gives Hamlet more importance
Than almost anyone else.
Mostly, Hamlet’s treated like a rebellious teenager or
in the case of his friends and subjects, as nobility – sure – – –
But here, the idea that his choices matter –
Well, we don’t see that much elsewhere.
Having been supplanted by his uncle,
He feels devalued
A less than market-weight prince.
No fanfare royal wedding would seem to wait for him.
The safety and wealth of this whole state seems quite disconnected
from the prince himself.
It feels like he could do what he wants
Because no one’s really paying him much mind.

O, but he’ll try.
He’ll wield the knife ahead of him
Hoping to shave off a bit here and hack
His way through there –
Like tunneling through a mountain
Bit by bit
Cutting his way through the world.

In the training this weekend
Our teacher quoted Beckett
Over and over again.
The one where he says something like
“You were born and there is no cure for that.”
We are all subject to our birth
to the where
and the when
Taurus or Virgo
To whom.
Born to privilege
Born to poverty
Born with the will to drive forward
Or with the desire to lay back.
The bestseller businessman says
We don’t really change
That we are born with certain strengths
And certain weaknesses
And these will always be so in some measure.
We are subject to our own make-up –
To our own genes and patterns.
We keep beating our fists against who we are
Not wanting to be subject to anything
Not even ourselves.

Is this why we fear greatness?
That once we achieve it
Or have greatness thrust upon us,
We will watch our will slip away?
If we think of greatness as fame
Or fortune
Or power
All those things come with some strings
That could tie up our desires
Such that we can no longer have them.
Like a movie star
Suddenly unable to go out for a coffee
Without creating a stir. Shackled to a sheltered privacy
Everywhere she goes. Greatness can expand
And contract,
Can make us lighter
Or weigh us down.

First, I’m not sure what a cautel is and I’m on a train away from Lexicon
Or even a dictionary so the answer is not forthcoming.
Second, this sentiment is extraordinary.
Now now he loves you
He loves you purely
Deeply
Honestly
Whatever. . .
But hidden in that “Now” is a “But.” The “but” follows exactly, in fact.
Now he loves you but. . .
And later, Hamlet will say almost the same “But” later with his “You should not
Have believed me.”
And “We are errant knaves, all, believe none of us.”
In a way, it’s pointing at Hamlet’s own belief in himself, in his word, in his love
All are subject to the world around him
And everyone around him is headed for a fall.
Funny how that doesn’t turn out to be true.